Well, we're two episodes into the Bravo broadcast of Showtime's Masters of Horror series over in the UK (Don Coscarelli's rather good Incident On And Off A Mountain Road and the pretty awful Dance Of The Dead from Tobe Hooper), but don't fret if you haven't got Sky or cable because Anchor Bay have now announced that the first UK DVDs will be released on March 13th (£19.99).

The first MoH release will include John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, a supernatural chiller that looks at the dark influence of cinema, and Stuart Gordon's Dream In The Witch House, a tale of madness based on a short story by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

Scheduled to be released on a bi-monthly basis, each volume will be a two-disc edition featuring two films from the series, both packed with a host of exclusive extra features including interviews with the directors, audio commentaries, behind the scenes featurettes and much more.

In other MoH news, it seems Showtime have now dropped Takeshi Miike's episode Imprint from broadcast. In what seems a little like a marketing exercise for the DVDs, Miike has been quoted as saying;
"To tell you the truth, I was not surprised to hear that Imprint would not air. Through the experience of directing this episode, I have discovered that while humor can have its limits, fear has no limits. I could not suppress the volume of terror that this film conveys."

Fangoria have also revealed that the producers have recently announced a second season of Masters of Horror, with John Landis, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, and series producer, Mick Garris all returning for encore episodes. The series is also hoping to land other solid horror directors like Guillermo Del Toro and Rob Zombie to fill out the slate.

Meanwhile, on the writing side of things, Clive Barker will be penning an original tale to be directed by Garris, while Cigarette Burns writers, Drew McWeeny (Moriarty of Aintitcool.com fame) and Scott Swan will once again be writing for Carpenter.

Representing a major television event in the US when it began broadcasting on Showtime in October 2005, the Masters of Horror series is the brainchild of director Mick Garris (The Stand).

To direct the series of 13 brand-new, one-hour films, Garris has gathered together an astonishing roster of major names from the horror genre - including John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, John Landis, Stuart Gordon, Larry Cohen, Lucky McKee, John McNaughton, William Malone, Takashi Miike and Garris himself.